


Wandering in the river

by Broba



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Kinkmeme, Other, Past Abuse, Psychological, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, psychiatry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broba/pseuds/Broba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme prompt, which itself was drawn from a tumblr prompt at http://gamtavficprompts.tumblr.com/post/39870419400</p><p>Following his arrest, young Gamzee Makara is sent for psychiatric care under doctor Nitram. He has been accused of a grievous crime and it is down to the doctor to examine the limits of his understanding and culpability. With the fate of a highly vulnerable and troubled patient in his hands, Nitram has his work cut out for him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The office was decorated in various pastels, intended to be warm yet calming. Pictures along one wall- friends, former patients. The opposing wall was lined almost floor to ceiling with books In the middle of the room two comfortable armchairs, arranged so as to not quite face each other so as to foster communication without confrontation. Two people sat in those chairs could stare straight ahead and not be looking at each other directly. At the back of the room was the obligatory desk, where doctor Nitram sat and pored over his diary. His mouth hung open and he relentlessly tapped the end of a ballpoint pen against the line of his lower teeth. Without realising it, the tapping of the plastic pen formed a perfect counterpoint to the almost imperceptibly soft tick of the cheap wall-mounted clock with the bright red second-hand.  
  
Tavros sighed and closed the book. He had been staring at the coming month for fifteen minutes, and he hadn't read a word. He pulled himself to his feet with a grunt, fitted his arm into the waiting cradle of the crutch he used to support himself and awkwardly made for the door, and some fresh air. He closed the door behind him with a soft click before he realised that he still had the pen beneath his teeth.  
  
The quadrangle, as it was called, behind the main building of St. Duncan's was actually a re-purposed parking lot that had been improved with a stand of cypress and a lining of bushes that were kept clipped to immaculate perfection. The effect was not complete, it was still a parking lot for all their efforts to make it look like a stylish and naturalistic oasis. There was a wooden combination picnic table and benches that looked like it belonged in front of a cheap motel. Tavros liked being there, especially in the afternoons. The one good thing about the quad was the way that the bulk of the white-brick building shielded it from the sun in the afternoons to provide a cool, clear space. Tavros settled the crutch in the gap between two slats of the table and pulled his pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. He purposefully laid the pen down on the table and replaced it between his lips with a cigarette, which he lit and drew from gratefully. He went into that calm state of nicotine induced amiability, and barely noticed when a colleague sat opposite him with a creak. He glanced up and nodded.  
  
“Doctor,”  
“Afternoon Nitram,” the other nodded brusquely. The way he fumbled with the file in his hand made it obvious that it was a work matter that brought him to the quad. Tavros was in no hurry though, and just stared into the cypress trees through the haze of his smoke.  
  
Doctor Zahaak pursed his lips impatiently as a little smoke drifted past. He removed his tinted glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose, before mopping a handkerchief over his forehead and replacing the glasses.  
“I wanted to talk to you,” Equius began. Tavros just nodded. “Would you look at this?”  
  
Equius passed over the file he had brought and Tavros manoeuvred the cigarette into the corner of his mouth with his tongue and flicked it open. Equius waited patiently while Tavros leafed through a few of the papers contained within. There was a photograph paper-clipped to the inside cover of the file which he glanced at.  
“Looks like a real live wire,” he murmured.  
“I know,” Equius replied softly. They were both long enough employees of St. Duncan's that they had acquired the habit of speaking in a low whispering tone to fellow staff. It was important whenever there might be a patient within earshot, and the habit tended to stick.  
“You wanted an opinion?”  
“Actually I'd like you to take on the case as primary.”  
“Oh?” Tavros' heart sank but he didn't show it. He had been hoping to reduce his clinic hours.  
“Mm. I'd prefer someone with young-adult experience.”  
“What about Vantas?”  
“He already had a session, it didn't go so well.”  
“How so? A bad reaction?”  
“Not exactly, the patient retreated into an uncommunicative, affectless state. If anything, Vantas calmed him down too much.”  
Tavros nodded vaguely, leafing through the medical charts. “What's the current drug regimen? I don't see anything in the notes.”  
“None yet. He's on ACE-inhibitors to reduce hypertensive arrhythmia already, and take a look at that police report...”  
Tavros did, and raises his eyebrows, glancing over at Equius.  
“I think I see what you mean.”  
“The original blood tests were performed at the request of the arresting officer, and Vantas requested a further panel which I think will corroborate the results.”  
“How long has he been taking hallucinogenics?”  
“Unknown, at least a year. Until his system is clear we can't begin to explore drug options.”  
“So what do you want me to do?”  
“We need at least a complete psyche assessment, and if you could get him to open up about what happened it might help his chances in court.”  
“Court?”  
“Yes, this is a court appointed intervention, the results of your assessment and recommendations will be used in determining the initial hearing.”  
“Looking at this, I don't see what I can do. Why would they even be bringing a case where there are all these indications of psychosis at least, and some kind of spectrum disorder most likely?”  
“The DA is pressing to bring full criminal charges, with culpability.”  
Tavros turned to the last page of the report to the charge sheet and paused.  
“Murder?”  
  
The wall-clock ticked around again and again, and the youth sat in his chair and watched it hawkishly. The red second-hand fascinated him and helped him shut out the noise. Behind him the door to the office clicked open and the doctor who had been assigned to him came in. There was a series of rhythmic thuds and clicks, one soft thud of the crutch touching down against the carpet to three smaller clicks of the metal taking weight with each step. Doctor Nitram came into the room slowly, following a path across the carpet. Looking down, the youth could see the scuff marks where there crutch had been many times before.  
  
Tavros closed the door after him and shuffled into his room, where his patient waited. He walked slowly to his desk, leaving the crutch where he would be able to get to it after he sat down in the armchair opposite the boy. It was a ritual for him whenever he started with a new patient, he felt it was important to demonstrate that he was aware of his physical limitation and was not doing anything to try to hide it. This was a small act of good faith that he had found helped to foster the correct relationship quickly. The patient was only just eighteen a few months ago, which was another reason that the courts were considering a full murder trial. He looked a little emaciated and wan, with a bush of roughly hewn hair and long, porcelain-pale arms that snaked out of his thin black tee-shirt. His face was handsome in a hard sort of a way, even with the pale stripes of still-healing scars that went from the corner of one eye, across his nose and cheek. He looked as though someone had swiped at his face with something sharp.  
  
Tavros sat down a little too quickly and shifted position a little, moving his leg into position such that it would not begin to hurt later. He still had the file, and he looked through the first page again calmly.  
“Gareth? Is that your name?”  
The boy looked straight ahead and shook his head calmly. He was still, but there was a slight tension to his body that betrayed his wish to move all the time. Tavros looked down at the sheet again.  
“I see here your name is Gareth, though.”  
Another head shake.  
“Would you tell me your name?”  
“Gamzee,” it was the first thing he said, and his voice sounded strained and hoarse from yelling. Looking at the report, Tavros realised that Gareth's full name of Gareth Michael Zebedee Makara gave him the initials GMZ, it wasn't such a leap to the name the patient had granted himself.  
“All right. Uh, Gamzee. Do you know who I am?”  
No answer.  
“I'm doctor Nitram, I'm here to talk to you for a while. Is that all right?”  
Gamzee looked up at him and smiled slowly. He made eye contact easily enough and he clearly had no trouble understanding what he was being told, but he was not forming reactive sentences or initiating conversational utterances.  
“Is that all right, Gamzee?” Tavros pressed him gently, seeking permission.  
If Tavros had been expecting more, he didn't get it. Gamzee was uncommunicative, responding largely in affirmative or negative gestures without vocalising. He just waved a hand, flapping at the wrist impatiently to indicate his assent.  
  
Tavros was a little unused to working in this way, and he tried not to show it. His normal course of action in such a serious case would be to investigate a clinical pathway in the first instance through drug therapy with recourse to analysis or talking therapies when the patient was more fully stabilised, but he had sensed a subtle pressure from doctor Zahaak that he didn't like. He could tell when a case was being pushed through the relevant points of expediency as quickly as possible, and he didn't like to be hurried.  
“Gamzee? If I start talking to you about some things, would you tell me if you have any ideas or feelings?”  
Gamzee stared at him from under the rough fringe of black hair sullenly. The idea seemed to be more then he was willing to commit to. Tavros placed his hands on his thighs neatly and continued.  
“Gamzee. Are you listening? Gamzee? I was walking along earlier today, and I fell over. How do you think I felt about that?”  
Gamzee flicked his eyes about the room, it was the first sign of interest he had shown, and Tavros took it to mean he had the boy's attention at least.  
“Gamzee? I found five dollars in the street before. How about that, how do you think I felt about that?”  
Gamzee wrung his hands rapidly, fingers flickering over and around each other, touching fingertips together in complex rhythmic patterns, stroking over palms and itching at his wrists. Tavros watched him discreetly, making mental notes of the situation.  
“It's all right, we don't have to talk. We can just sit here for a while.”  
  
Gamzee was becoming unfocussed and disinterested in the room and its contents. He started to rock back and forth notably, still wringing his hands. Finally he said something, a hoarse little mumble that Tavros nearly missed, so subtle and quiet as it was.  
“Did you say something, Gamzee?”  
“Ahh-h-h,” he moaned in his throat, “I'm goin' home now. This ain't fuckin' not. I'm going home.”  
“Mm. Well, I'd like you to stay here for a little while. We've got a room for you, all to yourself. Have you seen it yet?” Tavros took a mental gamble, “it's very quiet there.”  
“Ah!”  
“Would you like to go there now?”  
Gamzee shook his head, he was becoming increasingly agitated and Tavros was suddenly and acutely aware of what his patient had been accused of. He took a deep breath and kept his voice to a calm, level monotone.  
“I think we should stop now, we can take a break and talk later, is that okay? Is that okay with you?”  
Gamzee was just making sound now, and pressing the balls of his hands into his eyes and frustratedly rubbing. Tavros leaned on the arm of his chair and pulled himself to his feet with an unsteady, shaking gait. He fumbled behind him for the crutch and slipped his hand into the cradle gratefully as he steadied himself. He was careful to give Gamzee a wide berth and respect his personal space.  
“Come along, I'll show you your room, you'll like it there.”  
Gamzee was non-reactive now, and looked to be entirely dissociated. From the notes he had read this was similar to what doctor Vantas had experienced, there were definite signs of some kind of trauma reaction possibly overlaying an autistic spectrum disorder that may have gone completely undiagnosed before. Gamzee seemed highly reactive to specific sights and sounds, far more so then to ideation or empathy. Tavros opened the door to the office, but Gamzee remained rooted to his seat.  
“Are you coming?”  
The great shaggy head shook.  
“Are you staying there?”  
It shook again.  
“Would you like me to stay here?”  
That seemed to paralyse him, and Tavros decided that they both needed a break. He made his way to the quad for another cigarette. There was nothing in the office that Gamzee could use to hurt himself, a little time to calm and centre himself would do him good. Tavros mentally went over the contents of the report he had seen. Doctor Vantas had got far enough to determine there was a distinct awareness on the part of Gamzee that he had done something which brought him to St. Duncan's, but there was no indication as yet that he was aware that his father was dead or that he was likely to be held responsible. Tavros was already able to see the body of his eventual report coming together. Constructive work was possible, but certainly not until the last of whatever Gamzee had been taking was fully metabolised and not until he could be started on a clinically effective drug regimen.  
  
Tavros went through his routine, taking out a cigarette and tapping the end against the carton, before lighting up and taking his first drag. He squinted into the distance where the late afternoon sun had coloured the distant houses and fields in varicoloured shades. The first session had done practically nothing to advance Gamzee's cause, but there had been a moment or two of connection, and where there was connection there was the possibility of useful work. Tavros stayed away from words like healing or curing, even in his musing mind, but work was possible. There was the very real chance that Gamzee's immediate symptoms could be brought under control relatively quickly, and then it would be a matter of helping him to grow and adjust. Laying out his thoughts in a logical progression helped Tavros remain stubbornly optimistic in his approach, and that was probably why Zahaak had come to him. He ground the cigarette out, adding to a black mark on the table in the precise spot where he had ground out previous cigarettes in their hundreds, and once more pulled himself to his feet.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

“Do you find it hard to tell people what you're thinking?”  
He shook his head.  
“How about when you want to tell people what you want from them?”  
A shrug.  
“Could you tell me what you want right now?”  
  
Tavros asked his questions calmly, only glancing at his patient to make sure he was still engaged and understood what was happening. Tavros avoided holding eye contact, as it bothered Gamzee. After their first week of sessions, he was starting to feel like he was getting nowhere. He was asking all the same questions, and getting no real responses. On the other hand, Gamzee was more coherent on the occasions when he did choose to talk, and the drugs he had been taking had left his system. There had been some issues around that.  
  
“I wanna get high,” Gamzee muttered.  
“I'm sorry, we've talked about that.”  
“Mmmn.”  
“Do you remember? What we said?”  
“No.”  
“I think you do remember. Can you tell me? Please?”  
Gamzee groaned and rubbed at his stomach fitfully. “No gettin' high.”  
Tavros had shied away from trying to get Gamzee to renounce drugs entirely, as getting clean would be a whole other issue to address and more to the point he intended to start Gamzee on a course of mild antidepressants as soon as possible.  
“That's right. It's better if you start to think about other things you might want.”  
“Like what?”  
“Like anything. What would you like?” Tavros leaned forwards slightly, trying to hide his obvious eagerness. This was the first time that Gamzee had started to engage properly when questioned about wants and needs. It indicated an engagement with his inner monologue.  
“Some pie.”  
“Sure, I think we can get the cook to whip up some pie, what kind do you like?”  
“I dunno.”  
“Anything else?”  
Gamzee looked around vaguely as his attention wandered.  
“Pens. Cups. Books an' shit.”  
“You're just saying things you see.”  
“No.”  
“Yes you are. What do you really want?”  
Gamzee mumbled something indistinct.  
“Please speak up a little? I couldn't hear you then Gamzee.”  
“I wanna go down by the river.”  
Tavros frowned, that was new. “The river?”  
“Mm. Wanna go down by the river.”  
“What river?”  
Gamzee just gestured vaguely out of the window and then hugged his arms around himself. Something in what he had said had triggered a memory, or perhaps a feeling in him that he was having trouble processing. He very rapidly became withdrawn again and Tavros decided to call the session to an end.  
  
Later, and Tavros was sat in the dining hall picking at some supper. The patients ate as a group together, except for those who were not able to mingle with the general population for whatever reason. Although there were set times for meals the staff tended to eat what they could when they could find time. Like everything else in St. Duncan's the kitchens were flexible to the changing needs of the residents. Tavros had his patient's files in front of him spread over the table and was poring over the police report. Gamzee had been found near a river, wandering aimlessly. The police had been called following reports of a disturbance at his home and had been searching the area after they found a body. Gamzee had been unresponsive to the arresting officer, who had correctly surmised that he was intoxicated heavily. Tavros tapped his pen against his teeth thoughtfully. Perhaps it had not been random circumstance that took Gamzee to that place, perhaps that area around the river was special to him somehow, and he had wandered there out of a need to find a secure, familiar space.  
  
“Shouldn't have your files out in the public areas like that, the chief would have your ass.”  
Tavros looked up at the sight of a colleague approaching. Doctor Vantas sat down heavily on the bench opposite him and reached across to steal a potato niblet from Tavros' plate without asking.  
“Doctor.”  
“Yah. What are you even doing here, trouble at home?”  
“What? No, no what do you mean?”  
“Shit I was just needling you, no need to make it into a thing. I was on the way out. Going to get some fucking drinking on, you joining?”  
“Oh, oh no I don't think so. I have more work to catch up on, sorry.”  
“Ah come on, it's Friday! You have to do something to wind down.”  
“Is it? I mean, I forgot. Ah, that reminds me I'll have to arrange some weekend cover for my patient.”  
“The Makara kid, right?”  
“Yes.”  
“Yeah I saw that one when they brought him in.”  
“Mm. Zahaak told me. Non-responsive?”  
“Right. Between you and me, in my formal medical professional opinion, kid's a burn-out nut job.”  
“Uh. Well I don't think it's quite so bad. We've been making progress.”  
“Sure. Just be quick about it, Zahaak won't keep the DA off of this one for long.”  
Tavros looked up sharply. Vantas was just slouching comfortably and eyeing his plate. He reached over to pilfer some more.  
“What does that mean? What's the big rush on this one?”  
Vantas leaned over on his elbows, grinning wolfishly.  
“What, you didn't know? Kid's a celebrity.”  
“How so?” Tavros closed the file conscientiously, now giving Vantas his full attention.  
“You read the police report right?”  
“Sure.”  
“Kid killed his dad.”  
“That's still to be determined, remember.”  
“Yeah, whatever. But you know who his dad is? Was, I mean?”  
“What difference does it make? I can't approach my patient any differently.”  
“It matters to the cops, man. The guy was the sheriff of Clayton county.”  
“Oh, really?”  
“Oh really. So, as far as the DA goes, this kid is a cop-killer. They're out for blood and loaded for bear.”  
“Oh.”  
Vantas picked up a fork and began eating openly from Tavros' plate as he thought this over. It certainly explained the pressure he had been under to process Gamzee quickly. Tavros began tapping the pen more quickly against his teeth. As ever, Vantas felt the need to fill a lull in conversation.  
“So yeah, get it done, you had a week already.”  
Tavros looked up sharply. “Did the chief send you to talk to me?”  
“What? Fuck Zahaak I'm no-one's errand boy, thank you very much. Three years working together and this is how you treat me? That's straight-up suspicion. That was uncalled for.”  
“Oh. Uh, sorry.”  
“Nah I'm fucking with you again. Yeah Zahaak wanted me to remind you that the wheels of justice are turning here and you don't want to wind up under them.”  
“Jesus, could everyone get off my back? I'm doing my job here, and it takes as long as it takes. I'm starting to get angry about all of this.”  
“Yeah, you're a raging fucking bull,” Vantas sneered.  
Tavros sighed, “well maybe I am. I can't work with Zahaak over my shoulder all the time watching.”  
Vantas slapped his palms on the table with an air of finality and sat up. “And that's why you're going to come out with me tonight! You're all wound up, and Doctor Vantas has the cure for what ails ye.”  
“I'm not sure that's so good an idea, really.”  
“Well I am. You can't do what we do all day and not blow off a little steam at the end of the day, it's not healthy. You'll feel better, so wrap your shit up and let's hit the road.”  
Tavros sighed. There was no arguing with Vantas when he had decided on something.  
  
The two of the made their way from St. Duncan's to a bar Vantas knew about. They stopped at his house to drop off his car on the way at his house, a two level town house. Tavros hadn't seen his home before, and had to admit to a little curiosity. As he struggled out of the low bucket seat of Vantas' ancient '86 Capri, a car that Tavros felt was ostentatious and ridiculous, yet matched his personality to a tee. Vantas offered him a hand as he got out and fetched his crutch from where it had been slung in the back.  
“Come on up,” called Vantas over his shoulder, “I'll call a taxi, then it's off to the bar.”  
“Taxi?”  
“Hey, neither of us are going to be in a state to drive, fucking trust me.” Vantas opened up his front door and nodded to a chair where Tavros took a seat.  
  
The living room was oddly appointed, there was a random collection of psychiatric magazines and books littering every surface, mixed in with borderline pornographic girlie-mags. Vantas worked hard, but he took his down time equally seriously. From his collection of DVD's arranged in wide shelves by the television he also had a deep abiding interest in film, Tavros restrained himself from peering at any of the titles.  
“Do you mind if I smoke?”  
“Sure man,” Vantas returned from the kitchen with an empty beer bottle and passed it over to Tavros, indicating that he should use it for an ashtray. Tavros lit up gratefully while Vantas began dialling a taxi firm. Tavros sat back in the armchair and gazed over the décor while he smoked. There was a mixture of oddly quaint and kitsch touches, obviously from the previous owner, and parts that conformed more to Vantas' tastes.  
“Okay,” Vantas put down the phone, “our ride will be here in about ten. Then it's time to get fucked- I'm not even kidding.”  
  
Tavros nodded half-heartedly and tapped a little ash into the beer bottle. Vantas slouched into another chair and glared at him.  
“Jesus Nitram, would you loosen up?”  
“Sorry, sorry. I just have a lot on my mind.”  
“Yeah I noticed. It's fucking annoying.”  
“I feel like I'm not reaching this kid, but every time I think I'm not getting anywhere there are these little flashes, like there's someone in there who's coming out little by little.”  
“Eh. Okay.”  
“And I know there's more to it then what's in that police report. Maybe he'll start talking about it spontaneously when we create a suitably transactive therapeutic environment.”  
“Ah, yeah.”  
“I'll admit I wasn't keen on taking this case on, but now I have done I feel like I owe it to Gamzee to do more for him.”  
“Gamzee?”  
“Oh, sorry, that's how he addresses himself. It's the only identity construct he can work through. We were going over this yesterday actually-”  
Vantas began rubbing his eyes with his fingertips and groaned.  
“Nitram. Nitram!”  
“What?”  
“You know what this is, right here now?”  
“Uh...?”  
“A therapy session. And as obvious as it is that you need it, some of us know how to turn off after the end of the day so forget it. No work talk!”  
“Oh. I suppose. Well, what would you like to talk about?”  
“Just... talk! Normal, ordinary stuff. No psychiatry. Do you think you can handle that?”  
“Huh. You know, I don't even remember the last conversation I had that wasn't work related.”  
“Jesus. How the fuck are you not totally burned out?”  
“I don't know. I like it I guess?”  
“Well that shit doesn't fly here. We're two young guys-”  
“Well...”  
“-Fairly young guys, and we're going out on the town. You and me, buddy! Lets tear shit up.”  
“Okay.”  
“And no more talking about work, right?”  
“Right.”  
  
They sat together at a table in the bar, with their beers and a small bowl of peanut between them. The television set high on the wall before them was playing a football game but in the general din of conversation it might as well have been muted.  
“So what you're saying is, the dissociation is purely situational?”  
Vantas groaned, “yeah of course it is, what is this bullshit, you're such a fucking Jungian! There's no underlying archetypal compulsion, we're looking at pure PTSD.”  
“What about the spectrum element?”  
“Oh sure, that's there, but you're looking at high-functional at worst.”  
“But he won't talk about what happened, how are we going to work through that?”  
“Fucked if I know, get through to the kid, figure out what happened to his dad. Otherwise, you can bet the cops will get it out of him.”  
  
They had been sat there for over an hour, and the initial admonishment from Vantas not to discuss work matters was long forgotten. For all his sneering bluster, Vantas was an acutely insightful therapist and his insights were more then helpful.  
  
“How does a kid like that even happen?” Tavros mused, sipping his beer, “it's not like he was living in a trailer out in the back of nowhere. The father was a sheriff, he must have known how to get help for his son. Why is he only coming into the system now?”  
“You are one sheltered fucker, you know that?”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Think about it. Father in law-enforcement. Pillar of the community. Source of authority and so on. Then he has a kid who isn't right in the head. How does that look?”  
“Oh come on!”  
“I'm serious! There's a good reason this kid never got any help sooner, and dollars to donuts you can put it all on daddy dearest.”  
“You think the father was deliberately shielding him from the authorities?”  
“Hell yeah. I mean look, this kid isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the box. How was he keeping up what looks to be a pretty major habit without picking up at some kind of criminal record? Daddy was keeping his shameful little secret under wraps.”  
“Hm. And he had been home schooled through the last four years of high school.”  
“Big surprise. So it all gets kept in the family. Don't tell me you've never seen shit like this before.”  
“I guess. It's still just a theory, though.”  
“Well, you're the primary now. It's down to you to figure this shit out.”  
“Hey, it really helped to talk this out you know, thanks.”  
“I guess I can't help it if I'm such a fucking amazing clinician, what can I say? Now let's top these up,” he clinked glasses with Tavros, “and see about meeting some chicks with low self-esteem and daddy issues.”  
“Vantas! That's awful.”  
“Purely in the name of science you understand, doctor.”  
“Vantas!”  
They laughed, and got in another round. Despite everything, Tavros had to admit that Vantas was right- he'd needed this.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

“This,” announced Vantas, “is the biggest single bullshit any bull ever shat.”  
“Can you tell where we are or not?”  
“I know exactly where we are, I just want you to know how pissed off this all makes me.”  
“I'm quite aware, I think, I pretty much get it.”  
  
The two of them were ankle-deep in swampy water, and Vantas was glaring at a road map balefully while Nitram looked around warily. The afternoon light speckled the water surface with fat blobs of bright brown while the shadows were inky and endless. The only sound interrupting the bucolic splendour was the endless cursing of doctor Vantas as he struggled with the map.  
  
“I can't believe you talked me into this, come on let's go.”  
“I can't, not yet. It's got to be around here, the police report was specific.”  
“No,” quibbled Vantas, “the police report just said he was arrested around here. He could have been wandering for hours before they found him, not that we even know what it is around here he was even looking for.”  
“I just want to get an idea for myself. Something about this area called to him, I think, I want to know why.”  
“Why? Why? What do you think, you're going to glean some marvellous fucking insight into the troubled mind of a difficult youth? Please!”  
“It can't hurt to try, can it?”  
“It can entirely hurt to try! You're going to base your clinical decisions on your patient's choice of nature ramble? Why not just read a fucking horoscope while you're at it, get the inside track that way.”  
  
Tavros turned. His companion was now glaring directly at him, and looked to be ready to argue the point. Tavros had asked for his help and he had been more then accommodating in driving him to the area specified in the arrest report, but there were limits.  
  
“I thought you wanted to help Gamzee,” Tavros said softly.  
“I want to help you! To stop acting like an entire asshole and start being a fucking doctor!”  
“I need this,” Tavros nodded, “I want to understand him better.”  
“Fine!” Vantas spread his arms wide and turned in a wide circle, “soak it in! Enjoy the insights!”  
  
Tavros trudged away with difficulty, stumbling around his crutch. Despite the obvious difficulties, Vantas had not taken too much convincing to give up his Saturday on this wild goose chase. Vantas was prickly, loud, contrary and difficult but he was a fine clinician and when Tavros had come to him and openly asked for help, he had agreed. Tavros found himself believing that Vantas would help him still, despite bitching about it all the way.  
  
“Come on.”  
“Where are you going? Jesus, you're going to break a leg or something you know. And I'm not carrying your ass out of here, I hope you know that.”  
“I know, I know,”  
“And I'm not going to stick around here all day, it's not like I don't have better things to be doing.”  
“I know,” Tavros grunted as he crested a log, and Vantas kept up behind him.  
  
They pushed on through the bush and scrub. The ground was wet if not waterlogged entirely, and in the distance they heard the sound of the river rolling through its' course. The river did not have banks, so much as it spread out over the land like a winding strain with vague borders. The two doctors splashed and struggled through the water and the weeds. Tavros remained silent and alert, while Vantas just whined bitterly. They pushed through a strand of drooping willow and came upon a tar-paper shack by the bank of the river, it was little more then a hut and it looked as though a firm kick would collapse the entire affair. Tavros glanced behind him and Vantas just shook his head warily. Despite everything, Tavros advanced on the shack and pushed on the door.  
  
“What are you doing,” Vantas complained, “breaking and entering is a bit much even for you, isn't it?”  
“There's no one around, Vantas.”  
“That's hardly the fucking point, is it?”  
Tavros paused in the black doorway. “Why did you become a psychiatrist anyway?”  
“Where'd that come from”?  
“All you do is complain, and the way you talk about the patients it's like you don't even like them.”  
“See that's the difference between you and me. I don't have to like them to be a good therapist. I'm not here to hold hands and have feeling festivals, I'm here to practice mental health medicine provision. You- you're still thinking you can be everyone's personal Jesus. Trust me, that doesn't last. You get over that shit or you burn out one day and maybe it'll be you they find wandering around in a river.”  
Tavros contemplated this explanation for a moment, chewing on his lip thoughtfully.  
“I don't feel like anyone's Jesus,” he murmured, “the way things are going I feel more like Gamzee's  Pontius Pilate.”  
“It's not down to you to condemn or redeem him. You just have to make a diagnosis, that's all.”  
“Is that all we're for, though?”  
“What, that's not enough? All the fucking misery and pain in the world, and it's not enough for you to try and do what little, tiny, insignificant bit we're able to do? What the fuck more are you expecting here?”  
“I dunno. I just want to feel like I've done my best.”  
“This right here is more then anyone's best. If you weren't a psychiatric professional then this would be alarmingly close to stalking, you know that?”  
  
They entered the shack together. The interior was unlit, however the walls were too thin to keep the afternoon sun out entirely and the place was lit with a suffusive brownish glow that picked out the edges of objects and provided a little detail.  
  
“The fuck is this place?” Vantas breathed, “it's like fucking Deliverance in here.”  
“I don't know,” Tavros murmured, “but we might be on to something.”  
“Sure we are. All we need is a banjo-strumming hillbilly kid and we got ourselves a fucking hootenanny.”  
“Look at this,” Tavros led the way in excitedly and lit his cigarette lighter, illuminating what he had found.  
  
The office, the room in the main building of St. Duncan's. Another session, Monday morning. Tavros again sat opposite Gamzee and questioned him.  
“Why do you go down to the river?”  
A shrug.  
“Do you go to your little house there?”  
Gamzee looked up sharply.  
“I saw your pictures there, on the walls.”  
Gamzee shook his head, “fuck it, fuck it.”  
“I would like to talk about it.”  
“I want to go now.”  
“The picture of a man that you keep drawing, is that your dad?”  
“Mmn.”  
“Is it your father Gamzee?”  
A shrug. Gamzee was dangerously close to withdrawing again, he was staring fixedly ahead. Tavros pressed him, gently, picking his words and tone carefully.  
“Gamzee. The man you kept drawing on the walls. Is that your father?”  
“I guess.”  
“I think we should talk about the man on the walls a little.”  
  
Tavros waited for a reaction. Gamzee was sat staring fixedly ahead, and his bony arms were wrapped around his chest. He was rocking gently in his seat, and he had started to mutter softly under his breath.  
  
“Do you know where your father is now?”  
Gamzee stopped suddenly and froze still, his neck craned upward in quick, birdlike jerks to bring his gaze in line with that of his psychiatrist.  
“My father?”  
“Where is your father now, Gamzee?”  
“Dunno.”  
“I think you do know.”  
“Can't tell.”  
“You can tell me, Gamzee. Where is he now?”  
“Mmn,”  
“What happened to him?”  
“No,”  
“Where is the man from the walls?”  
“Fuck off!”  
“Do you want to go back to the river Gamzee?”  
“Wanna go back, yeah,”  
“Do you want to go back to the little house?”  
A rapid, bobbing nod of Gamzee's head.  
“Will you draw on the walls Gamzee?”  
“Fucker, fuck-” he drew a deep ragged breath, “fuck you!”  
“Who are you going to draw on your walls in the little house at the river?”  
“Why are you askin' me things,” Gamzee whispered, “fuckin' leave it.”  
“You know what happened to the man, don't you Gamzee? Would you tell me please?”  
“Dead.”  
“Yes, he's dead.”  
“Dead man.”  
“The man died. What happened after that?”  
“Went to the river.”  
  
Tavros let out the breath he hadn't realised that he had been holding. Gamzee could construct an accurate chronology of events, and place himself within them as an actor. It was a breakthrough that he had been working towards for more then a week of intensive sessions. In a normal therapeutic environment he would have been talking to a patient for months to achieve the same amount of clinical time. That was an advantage of having Gamzee interred at St. Duncan's where they could enforce a rigorous timetable of sessions but it also left him with less time to think. He realised with a start that Gamzee was rocking again.  
  
“Gamzee,”  
“No,”  
“Do you want to rest for a while? We can talk later.”  
“No,”  
“You've done very well, you know. You are doing a lot of very good work and you should be proud of yourself.”  
  
It was no good. Gamzee had withdrawn and Tavros recognised the signs- there would be no more useful work done today, until he had been given time to calm down and rest. This in itself did not bother Tavros at all, the idea of the cathartic breakthrough in psychiatry was a myth he did not subscribe to and he was satisfied with small, incremental steps towards a goal. He got to his feet awkwardly and gathered up his crutch.  
  
“We'll talk later, okay?”  
“Mmn,”  
“Would you like to eat something?”  
Gamzee shook his head.  
“It's all right, you don't have to. Why don't we talk a little more tomorrow?”  
At that, Gamzee nodded. Tavros felt a growing swell of pride burning up through his chest. Gamzee was facing an impossible uphill battle in talking even as much as he had been doing, and he was starting to show a real trust, and a faith, in his clinician.  
“Thank you Gamzee. We will talk tomorrow.”  
  
If Tavros had been hoping for some kind of admission out of Gamzee, a pained exclamation of guilt or a clue as to what had really happened if the boy were truly innocent, then he was disappointed. Tavros realised, with a cold logical certainty, that he no longer wanted to know for sure. He wanted to believe that Gamzee was innocent, a harmless bystander who had been psychically wounded by what he had seen. Certainly, he told himself, it was possible. But that did not change the fact that a man had been murdered and the law wanted to hold someone to account. Whatever Gamzee's mental state the court would want him to explain himself, and soon. Tavros found himself sat outside, in his favourite smoking spot. The table, the mark on the surface, the cypresses. He didn't remember limping out here or pulling a cigarette from the carton. When he looked down he noted with vague interest that he had been wringing his hands compulsively while he had been thinking, over and over as though he was washing them.


	4. Chapter 4

Gamzee frown fiercely with concentration as he worked. He was drawing a wide open vista of trees and clouds in harsh, simple pencil-strokes on the large sheet of paper he had been provided. The image was clearly taken from the view outside of the high windows across the hall. The residents were encouraged to express themselves artistically and once a week an art teacher from a local college who was working on an MA in Art Therapy came to St. Duncan's to hold an interpretive art class. So far, Gamzee had been engaging well, although the images he produced were all literal representations of things and scenes he could see around him, he resisted encouragement to illustrate what he might be thinking about and there was no sign of the man from the walls that Tavros had found a week ago. He was starting to wonder whether the obviously male, threatening image was something that Gamzee would still produce at all or perhaps it was a symbolic representation that no longer needed expressing since the death of Gamzee's father. Death- or murder. The courts would decide that. Tavros had been talking to one of his patients, examining the art produced and offering words of quiet encouragement. He made his way up to Gamzee, who looked up when he heard the clacking of the crutch across the linoleum flooring.  
  
“Good afternoon Gamzee, are you enjoying yourself?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Could I see what you have done please?”  
“Sure.”  
“Does it make you happy when you can draw things?”  
“Dunno. Sure.”  
Tavros had been thinking, and had composed his line of questioning carefully.  
“Would you draw something for me?”  
“Sure.”  
“Look there, do you see doctor Zahaak?”  
“Yuh,” Gamzee nodded and glanced over.  
“He's the big boss here, did you know that?”  
A shrug.  
“Would you draw doctor Zahaak for me?”  
“I guess.”  
“Thank you Gamzee, here,” Tavros handed him a fresh sheet of paper, and stood back to watch carefully. He knew that Gamzee was able to draw figurative representations of people, they usually appeared as vague, blunt-limbed manikin-like items drifting through his imagery but he had indicated doctor Zahaak for a reason. The chief was physically imposing and authoritative, and his prescription shaded glasses made him seem utterly unemotional and simple to interpret. More to the point, he was a male authority figure and Tavros hoped that Gamzee would make a connection with the imagery he had drawn of his father. Gamzee worked fast- far more quickly then normal- and passed over the paper for inspection without a word.  
“Would you mind if I kept this, Gamzee?”  
“No.”  
“Would you mind if I showed it to anyone else?”  
“Eh,” another shrug. Gamzee turned back to his paper and began a new picture, and Tavros left quietly and went to find doctor Vantas.  
  
Vantas himself was enjoying a little lunch in his office. He preferred to eat alone, and like the rest of the St. Duncan's staff he tended to fit food, like all needs, around the needs of the patients and the course of the day. He was nibbling on a sandwich with a flask of coffee at his desk when Tavros came in without knocking and shut the door behind him. Vantas very pointedly did not look up from the article he had been reading.  
“Busy, come back later,” he stated flatly.  
“I want to show you something Vantas,”  
“Sure, glad to help, I have clinic hours till four, come over then.”  
“Is there some reason you don't want to be helpful?” Tavros grinned sheepishly, as he made his way across the office to the chair facing Vantas' desk. His friend sighed and put down his sandwich.  
“This is my lunch break, I like to break up the day and keep work out of my break times. We've talked about separating work and life before.”  
“I know, and I'm sorry, but this will only take a moment, I'm quite excited.”  
Vantas looked up at last and grimaced. “You realise you have a habit of stating how you feel about things instead of just expressing it.”  
“Uh, oh, no I didn't notice that, sorry.”  
“Just an observation.” Vantas groaned and wiped his fingers, “what can I do for you.”  
“Look at this, Gamzee drew it.”  
Vantas frowned and took the page, running his eyes over it. His eyebrows went up.  
“Well well.”  
“I know. Look at the stylised sexual characteristics.”  
“Yah. Like a fucking horse. What's this supposed to be?”  
“Doctor Zahaak actually.”  
“Huh. I guess he got the shades right.”  
“Well?”  
“Well... what? You want marks out of ten?”  
“Highly sexualised imagery, when he was prompted to draw a male authority figure. And look at the stance, obviously threatening.”  
“I get the feeling you aren't asking my opinion so much as wanting to bounce yours off me.”  
“Well, here's the thing. This is quite different to the majority of what we saw in the shack, in terms of content and style.”  
“There was a fair bit of sex stuff in there.”  
“Yes, but the more recent images, nearer to the door.”  
“Okay,”  
“Here's my theory. I think that an abusive relationship- either overt or subtextual- existed between Gamzee and his father, which led to him having this sort of skewed view of authority figures.”  
“All right, with you so far.”  
“Gamzee keeps going down to the river- to the place where he is feeling safe to synthesise and process his emotional impressions, because he lacks any other kind of cogent output. Then something changes, in the relationship. I think it crossed the line into openly sexual abuse, which is where we see the beginning of these kind of images.”  
“I suppose,” Vantas sighed, “it would hardly be a unique case.”  
“The images become more sexual, more violent, perhaps combining with Gamzee's growing awareness of his own maturing sexuality. But it becomes more then he is able to dissemble into simple imagery any more, and he is pushed over the line into a violent outburst.”  
“Leaving the father dead. And the kid wanders off to the river to try and work out what happened in his head.”  
“Yes! Perhaps it was more then he could dissemble through the act of drawing, it would explain his confused state when the police found him.”  
“I would have thought the massive dose of hallucinogenics would explain that.”  
“A contributory factor yes, but I don't think that's all there is to it. Chemically, he is more or less back to normal now but the loss of affect and dissociation is as bad as ever.”  
  
Vantas thought about this carefully, folding over the paper and placing it down on his desk. He drew his fists together under his nose and breathed out a long, low sigh.  
“Say all this is true-”  
“I'm sure it is! Or something along these lines.”  
“Say that's so. What are you planning on doing, here?”  
“I'm going to go to the authorities with this, the investigation has to be widened! There could be a net of victims to be determined, and perhaps with cross-corroboration we can build up a full picture.”  
“Hm.”  
“What? You sound like you're not convinced?”  
“I buy it, sure. I'm just thinking. Have you spoken to Zahaak yet?”  
“No, not about this.”  
“I just think you should be careful.”  
“About what?”  
“You're not going to be given too much more time before you start getting very pointed requests for your evaluation, you know.”  
“Yes?”  
“The court date has been set already, did you know that?”  
“What? No one told me this, we're not ready,”  
“They aren't exactly thinking about that. Remember what he's being charged with, here. And who was killed. There are some pretty powerful people who want a neat, simple resolution to this and you're going to muddy up the waters.”  
“What are you saying, I should ignore the signs of abuse when I find them?”  
“No! No of course not. Just... I don't want to see you getting burned by this.”  
“What's my alternative, then?”  
Vantas glanced down, then up again. “Clearly there's signs of systematic disordered thinking. Report that, let it go to court. No jury is going to look at that train-wreck and buy a premeditated murder rap. He'll get life in a psyche-ward.”  
“What good would that do him? He'd be swept under the carpet permanently!”  
“Maybe, but how long would he last in a conventional prison? At least he'd have help. And you can bet the DA would go for any arrangement that had him locked up one way or another.”  
“Okay. And what if instead I report  that a vulnerable and mentally ill young man was sexually abused and hit out at his abuser?”  
“Have you been reading the papers recently?”  
“No, why?”  
“The sheriff was a stand-up guy, popular. Single parent, strong on law-and-order, all that shit. The system doesn't like seeing its' guys brought down.”  
“You're saying they'd try to protect a dead man over a living one?”  
“Sure, if the dead man was their man.”  
  
Tavros leaned his elbows on the table and massaged his forehead. Even Vantas found it in himself to let his expression soften a little.  
“Look. It's not your fault, and no one's going to suggest the system works all the time, or most of the time, but this is what we're working with here.”  
“Yeah,” Tavros sighed, “where do I go from here?”  
“Do you need to drop the case?”  
“No!”  
“Then I guess you'll have to figure something out.”  
“Gamzee's father is the key to it all. I feel like he's the one I'm really fighting.”  
“That's not so uncommon. I know this isn't what you want to hear now, but if you're going to treat your patient effectively you are going to have to stop getting so emotional and invested. I've never seen you like this before.”  
“I think when all this is over I'm going to have to have a long think, about what I want in life.”  
“Bullshit!” The noise came out explosively, and Vantas slapped a palm down on his tabletop, “I'm not going to let you fuck up your whole career and life over this!”  
“Then, can you help me?”  
Vantas closed his eyes and groaned again. “I guess I'm roped into things again.”  
“You're a good man.”  
“I'm the fucking best. You better know that.”  
“I don't really have much of a plan at the moment, though. I'm more or less groping in the dark.”  
“That's just because you're not thinking things through properly. If you're going to address this issue at all the first step is to establish what happened. Do you think the Makara boy will talk about it?”  
“I don't know, I haven't questioned him directly.”  
“Mm. Start him on a light SSRI course then, and start asking.”  
“I don't know if he's ready, though.”  
“You wanted my help? Guess what I'm helping you by telling you what you should have fucking done already. You're the clinician here, practise medicine! Meanwhile, see what you can find out about the father. And for Christ's sake stop burying your head in the sand! Read a newspaper once in a while, look at the world outside the gates. And, for everyone's sake, take a break!”  
“All right, all right, I will.”  
“Thank you!”  
  



	5. Chapter 5

Tavros stood by the river, and stared out into the trees, the bushes, the slanting rays of light as they played on the surface of it. The river made a constant, low slurping liquid hiss in the very edge of hearing at all times. When the insects were quiet, and the afternoon heat lulled the birds to quiescence that noise was everything. The river was a languid presence, alive and malevolent. Patient as a snake, quiet and still but at the same time threatening in potency. The river was all around, and it reached out to his feet. The wet mud was treacherous, every footstep could send him careening over and if he fell into the waiting expanse of the river then it would have him forever. Tavros leaned awkwardly on his crutch and lit a cigarette with some difficulty. He had been coming down to the river more often, whenever he could make it out here. Sometimes he had Vantas drive him, more often he had to make his own way as Vantas had made it clear he had better things to do. The river was blinding him, slowly. Piece by piece, the flickering lights that played on the river bored into his brain and drove out his thoughts.  
  
In the distance was the shack, it was the only landmark that helped him make sense of the place. Without the solid black shape of it at the edge of his vision, the environment would have seemed uniform and impossible to navigate. The only break in the endless green of foliage was the river itself, always waiting.  
  
Tavros knew he should let the river go, but he had barely made any progress in his estimation and the only answers he had been able to get out of Gamzee had all been tied up in this place. It had a meaning to him, and it called to him. Gamzee asked every day if he could go down to the river, and every day Tavros told him that perhaps next time, every day it became more of a lie. Tavros wondered if Gamzee could smell the leaf litter and mould on him when he came back from the rive. It felt like a little betrayal just to be here. None the less, understanding Gamzee meant understanding the river. The drugs were starting to work, he was starting to calm down and become more ordered in his thinking. Soon there would be answers, if Tavros remained brave enough to keep asking questions. Tavros was suddenly, markedly, aware that he was no longer alone. He looked back over his shoulder as a man came down the defile leading up to the roadway, easily navigating the twisting roots and the ruin of a pathway that had once led down to the spot where Tavros waited.  
  
The man was dressed in the uniform of the county sheriff’s department, he had a wide-brimmed hat and a badge that shone under the name on his breast- Ampora. The man looked youthful with his night-black hair and neatly trimmed sideburns, but the way his neck corded and his knuckles stood out on his hands betrayed the approach of middle-age. He wore black-rimmed spectacles and every time he glanced up to gauge his course before scrambling a little further down the defile the flashed sunlight. He also had a pistol, of course, though Tavros couldn't force himself not to let it bother him. Tavros held up a hand vaguely, and the man from the county stood not ten paces away from him and repeated the gesture. They stood there, acknowledging one another in the heat of the afternoon, for a long moment.  
“El Toros, right?” The man grinned and gestured.  
“Huh?”  
“Your brand. El Toros.”  
Tavros plucked the cigarette from his mouth and nodded mutely as the man approached him. He looked down at it, the tiny image of a bull-head inked above the filter, and replaced it between his lips.  
“Yeah, that's right. I noticed, there were cigarette butts right on that spot you're standing. El Toros.”  
Tavros saw from his badge that he was a deputy for the county. He nodded again.  
“That's right, I guess that was me. Sorry, I didn't think.”  
“Ah-h-h don't worry. I ain't goin' to arrest you for littering.”  
The deputy had a slight speech impediment, a rhotacism which may have been related to the very faint scar of a former cleft-palate repair on his upper lip. His voice had a lilting, rolling quality which combined with the country accent to make his speech seem deceptively youthful.  
“Thanks,” Tavros smiled a little, and nodded. The deputy was just watching him in a cool, appraising manner.  
“Would you object if I asked you to extinguish your El Toro cigarette while you are talking to me, sir?”  
“I guess not.” Tavros tried to return his gaze and not wilt visibly.  
“Please put out your cigarette, sir.”  
Tavros plucked it out and dropped it to the ground, careful to drive it into the soft wet mud with the end of his crutch.  
“How can I help you, officer... Ampora?”  
“You're just about the only one who comes down here. When I realised there was someone poking around in this old place,” he chuckled and shook his head, “I though I better check things out. This area is part of a criminal investigation.”  
  
Deputy Ampora just looked at Tavros, his skinny arms hanging at his side. The man was lightly built, he did not have a naturally threatening air, but he knew how to project authority and even power.  
  
“You mean the Makara case? I'm a clinical psychiatrist, my name is Doctor Nitram and I'm looking after the son of the deceased.”  
“Oh, yeah,” Ampora grunted, “prime suspect numero-uno.”  
“Nothing is proven yet, we're still getting to the bottom of it all.”  
“Sure,” Ampora drawled, leaning his frame against a tree and casually picking at a loose piece of bark, “that boy's crazy. Killed his own daddy. Whole thing's a cryin' shame.”  
Tavros was now grinning nervously. He didn't like the casual certainty with which the deputy said that.  
“Like I said. We're getting to the bottom of it. Uh, we don't really know what happened at all.”  
“Tell me something doctor. Did you see the body?”  
“I read the report.”  
“Did you actually see it though? Photos?”  
“Uh, no. No I didn't.”  
“If you saw what that boy did to the sheriff, you might be a little more careful around that boy. He's got teeth.”  
“It sounds like it doesn't matter what I say, you've already made up your mind.”  
“Maybe. Course, that don't matter. It's all down to what a jury thinks. Reckon no one around here is ducking jury duty for once.”  
Tavros felt the flush of heat and anger in his cheeks, even over the sultry heat of the river.  
“Well the trail isn't set yet. I'm not convinced he's fit to stand.”  
“That so?”  
“That's so.”  
  
Deputy Ampora took a step forward and Tavros held his ground. The deputy strode past him and beckoned silently, leading the way a little away from the direction of the shack. Tavros ambled after him with a little trepidation. They made their way down by the river, to a place where the bank became so low that land merged with water seamlessly, with no clear border where the ground gave out and the river began. The two men made their way close to the water, and Tavros found his crutch sinking ever deeper into the muck with each step. Deputy Ampora gestured out to the water, and took position leaning against a bent old tree that dipped leaves into the water's surface from dangling branches.  
“You know this spot?”  
“Should I?”  
“Right here,” Ampora nudged a place in the mud near the tree's trunk with his toe, and his voice took on a slightly quavering, wistful note that emphasised his speech impediment, “this was where we found a little girl's sun hat. This'd be about, say, three years ago? The kid was missing for two days and a night when we found it, nothin' more'n a little hat swept into tree roots by the current.”  
“Yes,” Tavros had no idea what to say.  
“Whole country department had been up an' down every inch of this goddamn river. Every damn inch, and then there it was. I can tell you, most of the men right then and there decided it was a sign,  and that was that.”  
“Really?”  
“Mm. We called in the dogs, when sheriff Makara, he come up here right where you are now, and he balled us out somethin' fierce. He got those dogs out again, and he told us flat that any man who wanted to go home that night, well he better come on up in the morning to hand in his badge. Just like that.”  
“He wanted to keep searching?”  
“All night, all the next day, too. One of the damn dogs died of heatstroke. But you know what? He found that little girl. I saw him walking out of this river with this tiny... this little thing in his hands like she was drowned, except I saw her hand holding onto his tie. She was just hanging on with everything she had left, like she knew he was her only hope. That's the man I had to pull out of a pool of his own blood, and watch them zip him in a bag.”  
“He meant a great deal to you.”  
“I believe that is what I was saying, yes. He was a hard man, a tough man sure, but he didn't deserve what happened to him.” Ampora turned slowly, lifting his eyes to meet those of Tavros who just stared, pale, “and that boy, that goddamn boy, he's going to pay the price of what he did. Oh yes doctor, don't you look at me. Don't you look in my goddamn eyes! Next time you psycho-god-damn-analyse that little shit you just remember. The law is a'comin' for him. And one thing sheriff Makara taught me is, you don't let it lie when there's business waiting on the river.”  
  
Tavros swallowed thickly. The man was staring him down now in an obvious posture of hostility, and he had no way to parse and analyse the sensations coursing through him. He had never been one to resolve his problems with violence, and outside of the clinical setting of his office he didn't know how to deal with those who wanted to. He tried to take a step back, but his crutch was stuck fast. Deputy Ampora strode up close, too close, and put his hand on the shaft of Tavros' crutch.  
“Doctor Nitram. You see about your business with that boy, and I don't give a shit if he's crazy, retarded or just plain mean, but say your piece and then stay out of the way, you hear? The law's a'comin'.”  
“Jesus!” Tavros stumbled and lifted a hand reflexively, touching against Ampora's thin chest. Ampora gripped, twisted, and pulled Tavros' crutch free easily. That simple, amiable smile came back to his face and he patted Tavros on the shoulder.  
“Careful doc. Don't fall in, if there ain't no-one around to pull you on out again. Adiós.”  
Tavros turned slowly, and watched the deputy walk away. He waited until the deputy had become a faint glimmer of a white hat between the leaves before he let his breath out fully.  
“Jesus!”  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Gamzee rocked gently in his chair, staring into the space between his hands which dangled over his bony knees. Tavros waited patiently, trying to mask the urgency and confusion he felt within himself. He wanted to grab the boy by the shoulders and shake him 'till his teeth rattled, to get some answers out of him. That was not the way, though. He had to accept the answers he was given, or not given as the case may be, and make the appropriate clinical judgement.  
“Gamzee? Are you going to answer me?”  
“Didn't ask me anything.”  
“Yes I did. I asked you about your father, Gamzee.”  
“Nope,”  
“Just now, I asked you when you last saw him. What was he doing?”  
Gamzee just shook his head and squinted at the spot in space that held his attention fixedly. Tavros sighed inwardly and started again. Despite the stonewalling, Gamzee was actually being remarkably responsive today, compared to their first meeting. The drugs were out of his system and the medication was starting to work.  
“Gamzee,” Tavros said softly, “I asked you a question.”  
“Yeah,”  
“You haven't answered me.”  
“Yeah. I know.”  
“You really should talk to me about this.”  
“Yeah. I know.”  
“I think that maybe you'd like to talk to someone, Gamzee.”  
“I know.”  
“Did something bad happen to your father?”  
“Dunno.”  
“Remember how we talked about good things and bad things, Gamzee? I know you know the difference. Did something bad happen?”

Gamzee shuffled awkwardly in his seat, he was wrestling with some internal issue that seemed to snatch back the words from his throat every time he wanted to talk. Tavros had seen this kind of a block before and he worked patiently, chipping away at walls.  
“Gamzee?”  
“Yuh.”  
“What do you think happens when people die?”  
He looked up sharply, flicking his eyes over Tavros, searching out meaning that was not available to him, before looking down again.  
“They go away.”  
“Yes, Gamzee, they go away.”  
“Away in the river.”  
That was new. Tavros had been trying to probe him on the subject of life and death for some time, angling around the subject of sheriff Makara's death, but this was the first time that Gamzee had given any indication that he had a structured philosophy on the subject.  
“Is that where people go when they die?”

Gamzee fiddled with his hair fitfully and shrugged. Of course it made a kind of sense. The little girl that the sheriff had pulled from the river had been, effectively, dead in the eyes of the town before the sheriff had reclaimed her. Add to that the common knowledge that the river was dangerous, that many people over the years had drowned, it made sense that concepts of death and the river were linked in Gamzee's mind.

“Where is your father right now, Gamzee?”  
“Dunno.”  
“I think you do know.”  
“Yeah.”  
“I think you know where he went to.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Is that why you want to go back to the river, Gamzee? Do you want to find him again?”

Sheriff Makara had gone into the river and brought back the dead girl.

“Dunno.”  
“Is he in the river, Gamzee?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Is that where he went when he died?”  
Gamzee hesitated fractionally that time, “...yeah.”

Gamzee knew his father was dead. It was the first time he had admitted it. Tavros felt a great awell of emotion rise up in his chest in response. They were actually coming together in a dialogue, on Gamzee's own terms. Tavros realised that, in his own way, Gamzee was finally starting to let him in.

“Gamzee, I'm going to ask you something very important now. Do you understand?”  
Gamzee nodded, and casually brought his hands up to cover his eyes, rubbing gently.  
“If your father was here, right now, what do you think you'd say to him?”  
“Dunno.”  
“Why not pretend, Gamzee? Imagine I'm your father. What do you want to say?”  
Gamzee was gritting his teeth now, and his hands were pressing against his eyes hard enough that it surely had to be hurting. Tavros thought back to deputy Ampora, and tried to picture the way he worded things. He had worked closely with the dead sheriff, there had to be some overlap in their linguistic register.  
“Gareth,” he said bluntly, “tell your daddy the truth, boy.”

Gamzee reacted as if he had been shocked, arching his back and crawling up into the seat to curl in a ball between the armrests awkwardly. He let out a low, rattling moan from his throat, swallowing repeatedly in between attempts to form words.

“Sorry,” he whispered harshly, “don't go away,”  
“Why did I go away?”  
“I'm sorry!” Gamzee shouted, becoming more agitated, and by now his rocking motions threatened to damage the chair, not to mention bruise him. Tavros stood up and moved over to Gamzee, placing his hands on Gamzee's shoulders to brace him upright.  
“It's all right, I'm here, it's doctor Nitram. See?”  
He knew there was no point saying anything, but he kept talking in a low, calming tone as he did his best to hold Gamzee steady and prevent him from hurting himself while the storm passed through his mind. Gamzee needed time, and Tavros gave it to him. He let his patient calm gradually, though he was still obviously tense and shaking, sweating and pale.  
“Come on, let's get you back to your room and you can get some rest, okay? You don't have to come out to dinner like usual, you can just stay until you feel ready, okay?”  
Gamzee nodded violently, and Tavros rapped his knuckles on his desk top twice, a sign for the orderly who waited outside to come in. Between them they manoeuvred Gamzee to his feet, and on Tavros' instructions the orderly helped Gamzee to his room while Tavros limped along behind. Gamzee was still shivering and sobbing openly as they put him to bed, and Tavros made sure to draw the curtains and reduce the light level to a dim glow.  
“Gamzee, if you need me you just have to call for one of the orderlies and they will be able to get hold of me, at any time. You can just stay here as long as you need to,” he repeated it to emphasise the point, “try to rest, please.”

In the event, Gamzee went straight to sleep and stayed that way, he didn't call for anyone. At the end of the day Tavros was packing his documents into his bag, ready to leave. His reliance on the crutch made a briefcase unwieldy and impractical, and so he relied on a back-pack. There was a knock on his door and before he could speak to answer Vantas let himself in rudely.  
“Nitram! Just the man I wanted to bump into.”  
“Yes, funny how often that happens in my own office.”  
“Yeah whatever, bullshit about how was your day, how was my day, blah-blah-blah. Come on, we're getting a drink.”  
“Sorry, I'm really not in the mood tonight. Thanks for the consideration though.”  
“What, you think this is all about you and your moods? I need a drink, I feel even more pathetic drinking alone, therefore you shall accompany me as a dutiful friend.”  
“I don't think I'd be able to be great company, though,”  
“Then try harder. I've been driving your ungrateful ass all up and down the countryside recently, and now I'm calling in that marker. You owe me a night of gleeful abandon, and believe me if I had anyone else to call on I would do.”  
“I don't know if that's touching, or achingly sad.”  
“See! That right there was banter! You're getting it, come on you'll feel really great about this decision later.”

They went to the bar Vantas insisted on, sitting at the table he demanded. He ordered a round of beers and was working his way through the first before Tavros had even got a handle on what was happening. Certainly his friend seemed to be out of sorts for some reason. Tavros decided that in one respect Vantas was entirely correct- Tavros did owe him for all he had done. In that spirit, Tavros gamely tried to talk to him.  
“Is something... the matter?”  
“The matter? With me? Oh, hey, I don't know, why would anything be the matter with me? Everything's peachy-keen around here of that I am certain!”  
“You seem even more aggressively abrasive then normal, you see.”  
Vantas just sat there, calmly tearing a beer-mat into tiny pieces.  
“I don't like talking about my personal life,” he said flatly.  
“Then why... all this?” Tavros gestured at the bar.  
“I told you, I don't like drinking alone. I'm not that far gone yet.”  
“You really don't have anyone else, huh?”  
“Thanks for that, makes me feel great.”  
“Well. Maybe you could talk about it?”  
“Huh. Wow that sounded almost professional, you should do this sort of thing for a living.”  
Tavros groaned, “well what, then? What's even going on here, do you have something on your mind or not?”  
Vantas stared ahead stonily, taking a slow draw from his beer. The bar was quiet on weeknights, and so Tavros could hear him clearly even when he murmured.  
“Hey, you know a deputy, some Ampora guy?”  
Tavros felt a pale, icy fingertip of fear slip down his spine at the mention of the name.  
“We met, yes, near the river.”  
“Seems like he'd very much like you to get off your ass and flip the kid into court.”  
“Yes. Yes he would. How do you know about that?”  
Vantas allowed his face to sink into his hands and groaned softly. Tavros was obliquely reminded of the gesture Gamzee had made.  
“Nitram. Is there any chance you're going to be done with the kid soon?”  
“Why are you asking this?” Tavros sat up sharply, “did he say something to you?”  
“Answer the question,”  
“Did he... threaten you? Jesus!”  
“No! Nothing like that. I mean, kind of.”  
“He said something, didn't he? Where does he get off, this is unacceptable! We have to report this, it's-”  
“No!” Vantas grabbed him by the wrist suddenly, and his expression was pained enough to give Tavros pause. “No. Don't say anything, you understand?”  
“Vantas, what's happening here?”  
Tavros found himself pulled closer, and staring into the worried face of his colleague.  
“Don't ask me how, but he's got some stuff on me, and if it got out then I'd be fucked.”  
“What stuff?”  
“Does it even matter?”  
“Well it might! Maybe I can help?”  
“You aren't helping anyone! You're just fucking everything up, can't you just fill in the fucking report, sign the fucking dotted line and be done with it?”  
“No! If you're asking me to compromise my- my principles! My profession, after everything you said to me, and you were the only one who actually gave me any support, I need more of a reason then that!”  
Vantas flopped back in his seat, spent, and ran a hand through his hair.  
“I can get that. You're right, I can't just ask that of you. You just have to trust me, the reasons are there.”  
“Look, Vantas, I know you're freaked out but you have to talk to me about this, we can do something about it.”  
“Not here. Come on, I need some fresh air.”

They made their way out of the bar and walked out of the lot. Tavros lit a cigarette, and they walked down the verge of the road leading the little oasis of shops, gas station and bar that broke up the endless countryside. As they got further away from the circle of light and sound, they began to hear the soft buzzing of the electrical wires ahead, and the hum of insects all around. The road led to the highway and from there to the city proper. In the other direction there was only more road, dotted with the occasional rest stop like the one they had been drinking at. Vantas was the first to talk, all the while staring fixedly down and with his hands rammed into his coat pockets.  
“He found out about stuff I've been doing. Don't ask me how, he just knew.”  
“Ah. What is it then? Drugs?”  
“Right to the point huh? No, not anything like that. Jesus I can't even believe I'm talking about this,”  
“It's okay, you'll feel better if you share it.”  
“I've been having an affair, okay?”  
“But you're not even in a relationship.”  
Vantas stopped and turned to Tavros.  
“No I'm not. But he is. Married.”  
“He...?”  
“Yeah.”  
“You mean you're...?”  
“Fuck you, just say it.”  
“I had- I had no idea. I mean, the way you talk about women, and what about- I mean you've had plenty of girlfriends, I don't even remember their names.”  
“Me either. I guess that's the point. It never worked out, and shit I tried. I really tried to make it work. But it's not me.”  
“How long has this been going on?”  
Vantas smiled, the moonlight picking out his expression clearly, it was a surprisingly shy smile.  
“Not long. I never did anything like this before.”  
“I'm not sure I understand, though. I mean, aside from the fact that you're seeing someone who's married, there's nothing inherently wrong in it. Certainly from a legal standpoint.”  
Vantas grunted and pulled himself up onto the low wall that bounded the road, facing Tavros and swinging his legs.  
“You really think that? Don't kid yourself. I'm a fucking paediatric clinician, how's it going to look if this comes out?”  
“Oh come on, this isn't the middle ages, they can't say anything.”  
“You think? Well hey, let me be the first to welcome you to America, you might be in for a sharp fucking surprise.”  
“Seriously? You think your job is at risk?”  
“Seriously. Look, we have to deal with a lot of parents, we take a lot of court referrals from county judges- these are seriously conservative people. Fuck yes it would make a difference if it came out I was a faggot.”  
“Don't use that word.”  
“Why not? Ampora did, that's how it is. I'm fucked.”  
“You're not fucked.”  
“I am while that kid is being given a free pass!”  
“I'm certainly not convinced he is fit to stand in court!”  
“Well then.” Vantas groaned and pushed himself to the ground again. “Look. I don't want to tell you what to do. I certainly don't want to influence you in this. But... things have consequences, yeah? I just wanted you to know that.”  
“I see.”  
“Yeah.”  
“I think I need to get home.”  
“I'll take you-”  
“No!” Vantas held up a hand irritably, “I need to go. Home. Alone. I don't need your help.”  
Tavros lowered his hand and he obviously showed in his face how crestfallen he felt.  
“Listen, I'm sorry,” Vantas mumbled, “I never meant it that way. I'm just... pretty fucking scared, okay?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Do what you got to do, okay?”  
“Yeah.”

They embraced briefly, and parted ways for the night.


	7. Chapter 7

When Tavros returned to work he had no idea how he would approach Vantas, given what he now knew. Over the following week he told himself over and over that it made no difference and that he would behave towards his friend in no different a way as a result, but he knew that not to be true. His very insistence on acting no differently towards Vantas was just a way of announcing loudly that he didn't care about... that... which in turn made it all the more obvious to himself how much it did matter. When he examined his feelings honestly, he had to conclude that he found himself made a little uncomfortable by Vantas now, and he loathed himself for feeling that way. It wasn't as though he had never encountered anyone of that persuasion before, but they hadn't been a friend, and valued colleague before. Vantas was close to him, certainly the closet person at St. Duncan's, and he felt strange about his friend now. He found himself talking to Vantas less, and he hated that. Worse, when he made the effort he found it difficult to find anything to say to him, and that only made things seem awkward.  
  
Tavros sat at his desk working, and caught sight of his reflection in the darkened screen of his computer. He looked himself in the eye firmly and intoned, “it makes no difference, it's just Vantas. You don't care about stuff like this. You're better then this. You are.” He was half expecting his reflection to reach through the glass and slap him, and tell him to stop trying to kid himself.  
  
There was no time for further introspection. His session with Gamzee was approaching, and he looked over his notes. He was starting to fall behind on the paperwork he should have been keeping up to date regarding his other patients, even as Gamzee's file swelled. Tavros leaned on his elbows and massaged his temples slowly. He wondered when he had become so wrapped up in this one patient that he had started slipping everywhere else in his life. As he had done many times before, he idly imagined putting his name to an evaluation which would state that Gamzee was not mentally fit to be tried in court. Damn the consequences, he couldn't just let them take the boy, not when he had seen the hungry expression in Ampora's eyes. The likes of him were out there waiting, a pack of wolves scenting the blood of the one who they blamed for their fallen pack Alpha. If the sheriff's department was going to pursue a policy of extra-judicial vengeance, then what difference would it make if he tried to give Gamzee some kind of a defence against them? But as often as he had gone down that line of thought, he had reminded himself that it was not so simple. If he submitted such an evaluation then the prosecution was bound to try to counter it with testimony of their own, most likely from another expert witness. If anyone else examined Gamzee then they would likely conclude that the boy was aware of his actions, and aware of the difference between right and wrong- because deep down that was precisely what Tavros saw in him too.  
  
Tavros looked up as Gamzee came into the office, shuffling around the door and awkwardly knocking on it at the same time. Tavros smiled and pulled himself to his feet, moving around the desk to sit in his armchair and beckoning for Gamzee to take the chair opposite, as usual. They began.  
  
“How do you feel today Gamzee?”  
“Pretty good, yeah.”  
“Better then yesterday?”  
“Sure.”  
“Do you remember how yesterday we put a number on your mood, and said you were feeling about a four? How about today?”  
“Uhm,”  
“Remember, ten would be if you were feeling really, really good.”  
“Four. Five. Five, I guess?”  
“Five? Will I write that for today?”  
“Five.”  
“Okay, five. Have you eaten your lunch today?”  
“Yeah,”  
“How was it?”  
“Fine?”  
“Have you had any trouble keeping food down?”  
“No.”  
“And you've been taking your tablets, like we agreed?”  
“Yeah.”  
  
That was another line he knew he was stepping over. His task was to stabilise Gamzee's initial psychiatric needs, and to provide the court with a psychiatric evaluation. He was not supposed to be getting into a course of therapy, and he certainly was not supposed to have any opinion either way as to the guilt or innocence of the patient. That was for the court to decide, based on the evidence. His task was simply to provide part of that evidence for the court to consider. Or, he reminded himself, the little voice in the back of his mind twisting the knife in, he could make an evaluation of mental incompetence to stand in court. He could assert that Gamzee was simply not psychologically capable of being judged as would a normal citizen. The word “normal” being the legal definition of the term rather then a medical or moral judgement. In the eyes of the law a normal person will have a reasonable understanding of the consequences of their actions, and can be held to account of those actions which represent wilful breach of the law. Tavros had no idea of the physical evidence that was stacked up against Gamzee. He had seen the initial arrest report, but there was no telling what other forensic evidence had since been gathered. For all he knew there was an open-and-shut case waiting, and the only component missing from a well-oiled legal machine was a defendant to process.  
  
“Uhm,” Gamzee grunted. He tended to attract attention with these vague little utterances, that could be covered with a cough and denied if they went ignored.  
“Oh, I'm sorry, I was just thinking, did you want to say something?”  
Gamzee was starting to assert himself, and to make statements rather then just react to what was straight in front of him. It was a major step, for him.  
“When can I go to the river?”  
That question, again.  
“I don't think you can do that, just yet, Gamzee. I wanted to talk about some other stuff today.”  
“I want to go,”  
“I know, I'm sorry. This won't take long, is that all right?”  
Gamzee just frowned. It was not all right with him.  
“Gamzee,” Tavros started slowly, mentally kicking himself for a moral cowardice that led him to going through a cycle which had long since ceased to be meaningful, “I want to show you some pictures of people, and I want you to tell me how you think they are feeling, okay?”  
Gamzee just shrugged. Tavros suspected that he had memorised all the pictures in the book by now. It was a series of simple images of actors expressing various emotions, the task was to try to identify them. Gamzee had, he suspected, memorized them all. He was very sharp, when he wanted to be.  
  
After the session was over, and Gamzee had departed moodily, there was another knock at the door. Tavros looked up and Vantas was poking his head in, glowering.  
“Hey.”  
“Vantas! Hello.”  
“Zahaak wants you in his office, now.”  
“I just have a few things to do first.”  
“Sure. I don't give a shit, but if you don't haul ass in there he is going to rip you out a new one.”  
“Uh. Is he angry?”  
“I wouldn't keep him waiting.”  
“Shit.” Tavros began putting his papers away, losing his concentration. “Shit. Shit.”  
“Yup, that's about the size of it.”  
“Is it about Gareth?”  
“Who the fuck else?”  
  
Tavros got to his feet and seated the end of his crutch in his armpit snugly, making his way to the door which Vantas held open for him. He nodded at his colleague and smiled sheepishly, before making his way down the corridor toward the office of the chief. To his surprise Vantas fell in behind him and kept pace, and when after a short walk in total silence he knocked on Zahaak's door Vantas was still right there, obviously about to walk in with him. That feeling of nervousness was intensifying.  
  
Chief Zahaak's office was a model of modern efficiency and order. Stylish cuboid shelving units formed a grid along one wall and held a small but tastefully selected selection of volumes. The desk was a featureless black glassy slab supported on a matte black base. The only furniture in the room was a Swedish armchair made of pipes and leather bands which faced the desk, and Zahaak's own seat behind it. The man himself was there, pensively leafing through the pages of one of the innumerable reports he dealt with all the time. He gestured irritably when Tavros arrived, pointing mutely at the waiting seat before him. Tavros took the hint and seated himself while Vantas just waited, leaning against the far wall.  
“Doctor Nitram.”  
“Doctor Zahaak.”  
“I'll ask you once. Is the boy ready for court?”  
“Ready? Or mentally capable?” Tavros flushed slightly, trying to hide the impulsive need to resist the authoritarian tone the chief was taking with him.  
“Ready.” Zahaak was not in the mood for games.  
“I'm not prepared to say so, no.”  
Zahaak tilted his head up slightly, his eyes were invisible behind his darkened glasses, but Tavros got the distinct impression that he was glancing directly at Vantas. He heard nothing but whatever motion Vantas made from his position behind Tavros, the gesture obviously met with Zahaak's approval.  
“Very well. The handover is scheduled for Tuesday.”  
“I can't accept that!” Tavros was shaking, his breath trembled in his throat. “You're talking about a patient under my supervision and I've not signed him off!”  
“No,” agreed Zahaak, “but you're going to, today.” He slid the report that he had been reading through across the desk, along with a ballpoint pen. “Sign.”  
“This is unbelievable! I am not going to be rail-roaded into making a statement to a court that is not accurate!”  
Zahaak finally raised his voice- only a little- but the effect was immediate and arresting.  
“Doctor Vantas! Is the Makara boy capable of being tried in a court of law or not?”  
“He is,” said Vantas quietly from the back. “I'll sign to it if Nitram won't.”  
Tavros craned around in his seat with difficulty and turned to Vantas in open shock and distress.  
“Vantas!”  
“Well tell me I'm wrong then!” Vantas shouted him down, “show me a clinical opinion that says otherwise! Can you do that? As a clinician can you say I'm wrong?”  
“I'm not signing him out!”  
“Enough.” Zahaak removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, “this is not going to turn into a protracted meeting on the subject. Nitram, this is happening. You need to accept it.”  
“I most certainly do not!”  
Vantas stepped forward to put a hand on Tavros' shoulder, “I get it, okay? You like the kid, fine. But you can't protect him, not like this. You can't use this facility and your medical privilege to hold on to him.”  
“I'm not-”  
“That's exactly what you've been doing, and it's not helping him! It's not helping you either, to let this go on.” Vantas looked down, “I'm sorry. But as much as it's shitting on you, this is the right call to make.”  
“Right for Gareth, or right for you?” Tavros hissed, and it stung Vantas to hear it.  
“Take your fucking pick,” he said quietly, “but if you want to fight it, you'd better be prepared to put your career on the line for this kid because you're talking as his doctor, not his friend.”  
“I can't believe you're doing this.” He turned back to Zahaak, “chief!”  
“This facility works in concert with the district court on matters of psychiatric care. That relationship is very important to the operation of St. Duncan's-”  
“So it comes down to money then?”  
  
Zahaak laced his fingers together and flexed them with an audible crackle, then sighed. He replaced his glasses before speaking again, and when he did speak it was after consideration, reflection and in full command of the facts in hand. His voice was low, imperturbable and absolute.  
“Doctor Nitram. See it from my point of view. As the chief administrator of this facility I have to consider the welfare of all the residents- and the staff. If you had that responsibility on your shoulders, and you knew that indulging the... request... of one doctor would cause real, possibly irreparable harm this facility and therefore to other patients under our care here, how exactly would you justify accepting that request?”  
“You're talking in abstract hypotheticals!”  
“There is nothing abstract about it. The Makara case has political as well as medical implications, and we have to decide, in this room, here and now what the outcome is going to be. Now how do you justify placing your wishes before the needs of the facility, not to mention the due process of law?”  
“They'll put him away for life and you know it!”  
“That's not my decision- and it's certainly not yours! If you want to take matters of legal culpability and justice out of the court and onto the therapist's couch then you're the one talking in abstract hypotheticals!”  
“That's pretty hard to square away when I'm sending some kind who never did anything except lash out at his abuser straight to prison for it!”  
“It's your job to, doctor Nitram. And if it's not something you feel able to do then I would be happy to authorise some leave or a sabbatical for you to decide what career you really want.”  
“So it's like that, is it? Take it or leave it?”  
“Take it or be given it anyway. You are an employee of this facility and I expect you to behave in a clinically appropriate manner and produce a timely evaluation of your patient- I am not being unreasonable in this!”  
  
He had been boxed in, and Tavros knew it. There was nothing else he could do to help Gamzee, but at least he could remain attached to him as a clinician, and he wasn't ready to let go yet. He reached over numbly and signed the release document. Zahaak nodded curtly.  
“Good. I'll expect your completed evaluation on my desk in the morning.”  
“Yes.”  
“Please do not take this to mean I have anything but the fullest respect for you, doctor Nitram.”  
“Yes.”  
“It is not a step I take lightly. I understand- from time to time it is possible to become attached to a patient, even for an experienced clinician. It's never easy in cases like these.”  
“I understand.”  
  
There was nothing left to say about it. Zahaak took the documentation and added it to his files. Tavros stood up and reached for his crutch. He stumbled as he made for the door, and he saw Vantas frown, and then reach out to him. He wanted to slap Vantas' hand away, to yell at him, to curse him for presuming that their friendship could continue under these circumstances- but he found that his mouth was not working properly, and as a border of grey impinged on his vision and he started to fall over, he could do nothing more then reflect on how this had to have been coming for a long time. Tavros could hear the other two doctors saying something frantically, as he closed his eyes wearily.  
  



	8. Chapter 8

On the morning when it happened, Tavros got a phone call before he even left for work. It was standard practice for such a call to go out- if a patient went missing then their case worker would be advised of the situation immediately in case the patient tired to make contact, which was common enough. At some point in the night between midnight and four in the morning Gamzee had broken out of his room, disabled a member of staff and departed through a window. That was only a precis of the course of events. In fact Gamzee had broken the door to his room down, which mean breaking it completely off the hinges which were only designed to open one way, then knocked out one of the burly orderlies who were trained to deal with just such a situation and after that he had broken open one of the windows to make his escape. Those windows were reinforced glass and were impermeable to all but the most frantic, frenzied assault.  
  
Tavros acknowledged the call blearily and put down the phone. He was certain that he had only closed his eyes for a moment, but when he woke up the room was lit fully by the rising dawn. In a clasp of sudden panic he grabbed at the crutch always leaning by his bed, and made to get ready. He pulled himself up with a moan and reached for his crutch where it always stood by his bed. By the time he arrived at St. Duncan's he was praying under his breath that there had been some kind of terrible mistake, or else that Gamzee had been found casually wandering about outside his room. It would be in character for him after all, and on the journey to work Tavros had constructed an elaborate fantasy in his mind of how it would all work out. He had so convinced himself that things couldn't be as bad as they had seemed in the night, on that phone call, that he was half surprised to discover that in fact Gamzee was nowhere to be found on the grounds. The staff were in uproar, and in snatches of conversation Tavros heard in passing that the police had been informed. As Tavros limped to his office, Vantas met him.  
“You heard?”  
“Uh, I heard something. Lots of things. Nothing solid though.”  
“Yeah well, sit the fuck down and settle in, it's going to be a long day.”  
“Vantas. What's going to happen?”  
“The cops are treating it as a case of an escaped fugitive. They're out now, looking. They've got search teams out with dogs.”  
“Oh my God, what is this? He's vulnerable, this isn't a manhunt.”  
Vantas shrugged and looked down guiltily for a moment, “listen...”  
“Vantas?”  
“It got out that we had declared him fit to stand trial. The cops know.”  
“What?”  
“That means he's not being considered a psychiatric patient. As far as they are concerned, the prime suspect in a murder trial just skipped town.”  
“Jesus!”  
“I know. But you have to calm down, okay?”  
“Why are people suddenly telling me to calm down all over?”  
Vantas took a breath and met Tavros' gaze, “they want to talk to you.”  
  
Deputy Ampora arrived within the hour. He had been organising search teams and had driven over to St. Duncan's as soon as he had his people dispatched to his satisfaction. He was met by chief Zahaak, who led him into the dining room. At one of the long tables he unfolded a map of the county, weighting down the corners with salt and pepper shakers. Zahaak hovered behind the deputy's shoulder, glaring down at the map.  
“Would you like some coffee, deputy?”  
“I would appreciate that kindly. Cream and no sugar, thank you. When can I meet with the boy's doctor?”  
“Doctor Nitram arrived a short time before you did, I will have him called.”  
“Thank you. I don't intend to be a distraction to you for long, I'll be on my way just as soon as I'm able.”  
“I would appreciate it. We must try to bring some sense of order and calm as soon as possible, this manner of disruption is not good for the patients.”  
“I'll bear it in mind.”  
The two men shared a look. Ampora simply stared blandly, and despite his darkened glasses Zahaak felt that the man was staring right through him, in a way that made him itch.  
  
When Tavros came to the dining room, alone, Ampora was scribbling various lines and crosses over the map with a marker, and murmuring into his radio. Beside his elbow an untouched cup of coffee steamed gently. At the sound of Tavros' crutch hitting the linoleum tiles rhythmically Ampora looked up and indicated the bench opposite his position, without pausing the orders he was reeling off into his radio. Glancing down as he sat, Tavros could see that Ampora had marked out various areas of interest and was crossing them out as in turn the search teams combed ground. Without preamble Ampora clicked off his radio with an electrical hiss and addressed him directly.  
“Seven hundred and forty-odd square miles, you know.”  
“Excuse me?”  
“The area of this county, including the river itself. That's how much ground I'm responsible for, and somewhere on those seven hundred miles we got ourselves a runaway, don't we?”  
“I guess.”  
“Are you tired, doctor?”  
“Not really.”  
“I noticed that you were not looking at me while I was speaking to you, doctor Nitram.”  
Tavros looked up from the map, meeting Ampora's gaze awkwardly. Ampora smiled thinly and removed his glasses.  
“Doctor Nitram. You want to make my day go a little easier and hazard a guess where the boy is?”  
“Would it make any difference what I say?”  
“It might.”  
“What are you going to do when you find him?”  
  
At that, Ampora carefully folded closed the arms of his glasses and casually tapped them on the map as he thought about Tavros' words. He took his time, and chose his words carefully and with precision.  
“Doctor. I realise that you and I haven't always seen eye to eye on this case.”  
“Yeah. But-”  
“Please, doctor.” Ampora held up a hand and patiently waited for silence. He had a way of making Tavros feel like a child that brought an involuntary flush of anger for a moment.  
“Thank you,” Ampora continued, “we haven't seen eye to eye. But the moment that boy stepped out side of this facility without the court's permission, this became a matter for the law. The law, doctor. Not my opinion, not my call. The law. It doesn't matter who it is out there, the law says that right here and now he has to be brought in and it's my job to do that. Do we understand one another?”  
“We do,” said Tavros stiffly.  
“I've made no attempt to hide the fact that I want that boy brought before a judge to answer for what happened to sheriff Makara. But I want it done by the book. I want a court of law to pass judgement. This isn't a vendetta, you understand? I'm doing my job. I'm doing it just as well and as fully as I can, as I imagine you do your own.”  
“That's not exactly making me feel any better.”  
Ampora slammed his hand down on the long table suddenly, as shocking and effective as a thunderclap, “how do you want to feel about it, doctor? Your patient- a suspect in a murder case I might add- is escaped and at large, and how do you think you ought to be feeling about it? This is going to be a hard day, doctor Nitram, a long hard shitty day, so get used to that.”  
“I guess we do understand each other,” Tavros said, trying to sound like he had something to say.  
“Now.” Ampora tapped the map with a fingertip, “any ideas?”  
Tavros took a deep breath, coughed, and looked over the map of the county. “Well, there's that shack he used to go to-”  
“First place we checked, I have men out there right now.”  
“Did they find anything?”  
“The dogs have a scent, but they can't tell if he had been there recently or it's just residuals.”  
“He'll have gone into the water I think, if he can.”  
“That makes things rough. Where's he heading?”  
“I don't know,”  
“Doctor...”  
“I don't know! I think he will have gone out into the river, if he could.”  
“There's some currents in that river, whip a man under in a second- he had better not be thinking of taking a swim.”  
“Do you have any boats out?”  
“River patrol is coming in from Clayton, but they can only spare a couple of boats and they're still on the way.”  
“What's the hold up?”  
Ampora grinned mirthlessly. “The river, doctor. On the river, everything goes at the speed the river wants.”  
  
The car ride was deadening. Tavros was jammed into the back of Ampora's cruiser, alongside bags of equipment and supplies, which he felt like a part of. Ampora himself was in the passenger seat up front, chattering constantly into his radio and poring over the map while another deputy took the wheel. Ampora had nothing to say to him, and Tavros had nothing to do but stare out of the window at the passing scenery. The light was becoming piercing and intense, the day was heating up. It was looking like an especially hot one, no time to be scrabbling around in the muck and slime of a river bank. After a time, Ampora started to say less and less. The orders had been given, the men were out. The time had come to begin waiting for something to turn up.  
  
In the event, Ampora had set up a small command post near the shack on the river that had been for so long the focus of Gamzee's attention. The various duffels and sacks in the cruiser were unpacked and a low, open-walled tent set up with a trestle table and chairs. Ampora believed in being close to the action, and the makeshift camp was a hive of activity as men, weapons and dogs were constantly passing through. The dogs were of limited use as it became rapidly clear that, if Gamzee was in the area, he had crossed deep water at some point- the dogs couldn't help. Men had searched the river bank for two miles in either direction and found nothing. Tavros himself felt like a fifth wheel and just hung back at the edge of the camp, glowering and smoking.  
  
The day wore on, and it wore the men and women of the department down. The heat was becoming sweltering, and the river provided a humidity that was sapping to their resolve. Shirts clung to backs, and hats were removed regularly to fan at sopping brows. Ampora was the only one who seemed unaffected, or at least determined not to let anything stop him. He remained, hovering over his map table like a predator, glaring balefully down at the increasing number of red crosses as more areas were marked clear of any sign. The river picked up the light as the sun slid across the sky stealthily, and without warning erupted into flashing white gold. All of the searchers wore sunglasses by this point but Tavros found his eyes watering profusely and he had to look away. The effect turned the river into a bar of pain across his vision and he couldn't look at it. Instead he sought solace under Ampora's tent.  
  
“Doctor.”  
“Deputy.”  
Ampora listened carefully to a crackling radio retort and sighed. He didn't bother to respond, but just crossed off another spot on the map.  
“Deputy Ampora...”  
“Yes?”  
“How long will this be going on?”  
“Well I don't know doctor. How long will it be till we find him?”  
“It must be pretty brutal out there.”  
“I imagine so, it's no picnic right here.”  
“What I mean is, maybe you should call a  break or something?”  
Ampora looked up slowly, with an expression of raw incredulity.  
“A break? Like, everyone stop for some iced tea? That kind of a break?”  
“Jesus, could you just- look, you're going to get people coming down with heat stroke or something.”  
“The men are searching on shifts, and they have water. We do actually know our job, doctor.”  
“I know, I'm not saying that-”  
“I'm not going to let up for a second! No-one's stopping, and no-one gets to go home! Okay? We're ending this today!”  
“I see.”  
  
Tavros leaned awkwardly on  his crutch and looked around him. The faces of the sheriff's department members all told a story. They were out here for as long as they needed to be, and not for Ampora- this was all for their fallen leader. Not for the first time, Tavros was reminded of the girl that sheriff Makara had pulled out of that river. Maybe some of the deputies out today had been there on that day, and had wanted to give up. Maybe they had been where Tavros was now, arguing with a recalcitrant sheriff that there was no point going on. In the end Makara had won through with sheer force of personality, and had saved that little girl. This time no-one was going to be saved, but there would be redemption in it for some of those men who had given up on a Makara once before.  
“I fucking hate this river.” It came out of nowhere. Ampora was staring out at the water, following the crawling shape of a river boat toiling past in the distance trailing a drag-line. For a moment, Tavros wondered if someone else had spoken.  
“What's that?”  
“This river. Nothing good comes out of it. You know how many reports I've see over the years? Drownings, disappearances. Bodies, sometimes. Not many bodies- more people go in then come out.”  
“I didn't know.”  
“This fucking river. Every time I look at it I can just feel it looking back at me.”  
“The river is?”  
“I dunno. The river, or whatever lives in there. Tell me doctor,” he looked up with a sudden lift to his tone, deliberately fighting down the dourness in his voice, “have you ever heard of the _genius locii?_ ”  
“Latin. The 'spirit of the place,' right?”  
“Very good. Yeah. Those old Romans, they figured that sometimes a place has this feeling to it, like a presence. They called it a spirit, but it doesn't matter what you call it. Some places just have this feel to 'em. You ever felt that, doctor?”  
Tavros was suddenly back inside the clap-board shack on the river bank, looking up at the crude drawings glued to the walls.  
“Yes. I think I know what you mean.”  
“That's what this river is to me. A place with a bad fucking spirit to it. Believe me, I don't want to be here any more then you do.”  
“Why do you do all this, then? I mean, you could be back in your office, you only need a radio.”  
“Maybe. Maybe the same reason you wanted to protect your patient.”  
“I never-”  
Ampora held up a hand, and shook his head wearily.  
“It's okay, I don't care now. We're past that. You protected him with everything you had, because that's your job. That hospital you work for, it's a place where people go to be protected. That's the spirit of the place. Maybe you're the spirit of hopeless causes.”  
Tavros couldn't help but smile, and shrugged. “I'm just a doctor.”  
“And I'm just a deputy. It's what we are.”  
  
Tavros shielded his eyes with a hand, and looked out into the burning river.  
“Deputy Ampora, can I ask you something?”  
“Of course.”  
“Don't take this, uh, you know, the wrong way?”  
“I'll do my best.”  
“Why have you been such an enormous asshole?”  
“What's the right way to be taking that?”  
“You threatened doctor Vantas, and I figure it was you threatening the whole hospital. There was a lot of talk about how important our relationship with the court is, and how that's at risk.”  
“'Threatened' is a word I'd use a little more carefully, doctor.”  
“Fine. Whatever. You said, uh, scary shit and got people to do what you want. Call it whatever- but you're not exactly a nice guy.”  
Ampora took off his hat and wiped a handkerchief across his brow, before replacing the hat in place.  His hair was slick and neat.  
“You think I'd be better at my job if I was a more charming fellow?”  
“It's just a job to you?”  
Ampora nodded, “just a job. Takes a little ass-kicking sometimes, but it's all just a job.”  
  
That gave Tavros pause. And, in a strange way, it upset him. He had a distinct impression of the deputy in his mind, and it fitted with the idea of a Machiavellian manipulator, using blackmail and threats to get his way. The idea that, after everything that had happened, Ampora was just a public servant doing his job as well has he could seemed somehow wrong, misshapen. Ampora the evil deputy was a lot easier to handle then Ampora the guy doing a tough job in a touch way. Tavros felt a senseless, foolish desire to puncture that cool unperturbed mien. For whatever it cost he wanted to see Ampora crack, just once.  
“You aren't going to get him, you know.”  
“The boy?”  
“Yeah. You got all these men, and boats, and the dogs- if he was anywhere in ten miles of here you'd have found him.” Tavros shrugged, grinning inwardly.  
“Where do you think he is?”  
“Who knows? Gone. By now long gone.”  
“Is that what you truly believe, doctor?”  
“Sure.”  
“Maybe,” Ampora considered this, “but I have faith.”  
“Faith!”  
“That a dirty word with you, doctor?”  
Tavros flushed. Nothing seemed to stick to Ampora, he was pure oil through and through.  
“You're a bastard,” Tavros murmured wearily, leaning on his crutch, “you're a God damned bastard.”  
“Guess I am. And I'm the kind of bastard who won't ever let a thing go, neither. I ain't leaving this river just yet doctor, not by a long shot!”  
  
What was left of the day hissed out, as the night and the river swallowed the light and the heat. As the sky began to cool and dim, a cold breeze sliced off the water surface and made them shiver. By now electric lamps had been set up and the map was covered in crossed and markings, and there was still nothing. The river had been combed thoroughly for miles of her length. Though Ampora remained as rigidly intent as ever, his men were less eager. The looks passing between them were getting harder and harder to ignore and the atmosphere was stultifying. They had failed and they knew it, the failure weighed them down and made them uneasy. As the mood of the searchers descended, Tavros felt himself grow lighter and lighter. He had never held out much hope for Gamzee's chances, but as time passed the thought came into his mind that maybe- hoping against hope- it would not end with Gamzee dragged off to a court that would condemn him out of hand and break him. There was no personal or professional justification for that line of thinking. Whatever else he might think of the matter Tavros knew he was a medical professional and furthermore a court appointed official- he had a legal and ethical duty to his patient and the law, and in his heart he had relegated these ideas to second-rate considerations.  
  
In perhaps the most startling revelation of the day, Tavros was starting to feel sorry for deputy Ampora. He knew what was happening as well as any of them, he saw the marks on the map grow and cross over each other. They had done all that was possible to do, and had come up empty handed. Ampora still sat rigidly upright, but every now and then Tavros heard a sigh of sheer despair hiss between his teeth, and he knew that he was watching a man die by degrees. Tavros lit a cigarette and limped away from the map table, ambling closer to the lapping waters. He was considering his next move when there came an excited cry from beside and behind him, and Tavros felt his gut clench.  
  
The grass bank he was standing on lit up and flashed, illuminated by flickering beams as men with torches ran to the river. The murky water was lit up in places as the lights played over the surface, only penetrating a very little way. A man was stood on the bank pointing and yelling at something on the water, and Tavros strained his eyes to see. He was almost deafened as Ampora strode up next to him and barked out an order for the lights to converge.  
  
The torches picked it out, some fifty or more feet from the bank. At that distance the light was too faint to properly show anything up, but there was definitely something floating in the water. It was amazing enough that the man on the bank had picked it out in the dark, a miracle. A black mass, that could have been roughly the length of a man, floating serenely by. At one end of the mass was a lick of white, like a finishing touch from a lazy painter. It could have been the profile of a face, showing over the water, a bloated, whitened face.  
“What is it?” Ampora yelled, “more light! There!”  
But there was no more light, and nothing more then a suggestion. It was a body, of viewed in the right way, or else a collection of sticks and flotsam, or else something unknown, and it floated past in it's own time, caught in the river.  
“Is it him?” Tavros breathed.  
“I don't know. More light! Anders, get on the squawk and have the boats come up! Coy? Coy! Go get the coil of rope from my car!”  
“Rope?”  
“Boats won't be back in time, I'm going out there.”  
“You're not serious!”  
“I'm going to get my man, damn it!”  
“Ampora-”  
The deputy was trying to pull away, Tavros grabbed at his belt and pulled.  
“You're done doctor, get off me!”  
“Ampora, listen! God damn it, listen! Yuh, you remember the currents? If you go out there you're staying out there. Think man!”  
Ampora glared at him balefully, but he knew that Tavros was right on this. He put his hand on Tavros' own and gently extricated him.  
  
Down the bank, another of the men called out. “No- no it's just some sticks and stuff, I think.”  
Ampora swivelled and squinted, in the dark it was impossible to be sure. The floating thing wasn't moving, only drifting with the current.  
“Jesus,” Ampora breathed. “Holy Jesus give me this one, don't let him get away, oh God,” he yelled back to his men, “where the fuck are my boats!”  
“They're not going to get here in time,” Tavros said blankly, “you know it.”  
“Is it him?” Ampora was talking to himself, now, “I can't see, is it him? I can't see.”  
Tavros squinted, too. It was getting further away now, and had begin to spin gently in the current. He was sure he saw a face in there. “I think so,” and he did.  
  
The men stood on the bank while their lights picked out less and less of the shape in the water as is floated away from them, and then they were standing looking into nothing. After a time there came the dull throb of engines as the boats powered into view, but they could only point vaguely and the boats found nothing. One by one the men began drifting back to their tents and cars, and the word went out that they were packing up the operation. Only Ampora stayed, staring out at the river, and Tavros stood by him, constantly shifting his crutch to stop it catching in the mud.  
“Doctor Nitram.”  
“Yes?”  
“Could I trouble you for one of your cigarettes?”  
“Surely. I didn't think you smoked.”  
“Not usually.”  
Ampora took the offered cigarette and accepted a light gratefully. The two men stood for a time, but conversation didn't come easily to them.  
“What... what will you do now?”  
“Now?” Ampora shrugged, “file a report, I have the boats for a few days more, I'll keep them searching around.”  
“I don't think you'll find anything.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Are you...” Tavros hated himself for asking it, but he had to, “are you going to be all right? Do you need anything?”  
“No, no. It's fine.”  
  
They waited, and in time Ampora tossed the remains of his cigarette into the river. They had both seen something carried away from them into the night on the river, that was all there was to it. It was over.  
  
In the morning Tavros began filing his papers away for archiving, and signed off on his final report for the court. Given the circumstances it was unlikely that the report would ever even be read, now. He felt terrible, his hands shook and his head pounded. The morning coffee tasted like pure ash. He looked up when Vantas came to him, walking into the office without knocking and taking a seat.  
“Hey,” Vantas waved vaguely.  
“Vantas, hi.”  
“So I heard that Ampora found something?”  
“I don't know. We saw something, sure, but it could have been... I mean I don't know. The river is very dangerous, people drown all the time. If Gareth went in there...” he sighed and looked down.  
“Yeah. Poor kid.”  
“Mm.”  
“So. The chief said you're taking a sabbatical?”  
“Yeah. I got some papers I could write, that kind of thing.”  
“I suppose you expect me to take on your case load in the meantime? Ass.”  
“The chief is going to distribute-”  
“Yeah, yeah I was kidding, relax.” Vantas shifted uncomfortably.  
“What?”  
“I'm going to miss you around here. You're the only sufferable person in this place.”  
“Ah-h-h you'll get by. And, I thought, maybe we could go for a drink some times?”  
“Oh yeah?” Vantas smiled.  
“Yeah. I need to get out more, you were right about that.”  
“About time you listened to me.”  
Tavros smiled sheepishly, and just nodded. Vantas sat up and thrust a hand out with a lopsided grin, and Tavros clasped it. Vantas nodded and got up.  
“Listen to me one more time. Put all this shit out of your mind. Grab some beers, talk to a nice girl, whatever. Move on.”  
“Thank you. I mean it, thanks.”  
“See you.”  
“Yeah.”  
  
Tavros got back to his work, finishing up some paperwork that should have been filed weeks ago. He looked up, where an empty chair stared back at him. He looked over, and the clock on the wall said nothing to him. He put down his pen and laid his head gently in his hands, swallowing down a wet ball of guilt and pain. He had seen a face in the water, he knew it, and when he thought back on that night sometimes the face would twitch and move, and Gamzee would beckon to him from the river before drifting away. He told himself, it was just a few twigs, a bit of trash caught up in a current. He could believe it, on an intellectual level. His gut told him truthfully that either way he would never see Gamzee again. At least he would never have to sit there and watch Gamzee dragged up to court, that was a small mercy. Perhaps, he told himself, it was better this way.  
  
Tavros sighed and reached for his crutch. He would see a floating, drifting face whenever he closed his eyes, or else it was just a trick of the light. Or else he would see the boy he had known, wandering in the river, free at last.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long to finish- the end was a long time coming. Writing a lot of this meant being in a place in my head I didn't like being so much, I had to take a little break- but overall I'm proud of it. The ending is ambiguous, and I want it that way. It's up to you to decide what really happened, and why. All I know is, I ain't going anywhere near that damn river again.


End file.
